Media in Serbia

Plunder Pursuant the Law

Order in Serbian and, the best he can, in Montenegrin media is being introduced by the minister who jut two years ago believed that opening of Belgrade airport after lifting of the sanctions in 1996 served only "for Milosevic and his criminals to travel around the world". In his job he is assisted by the police and state clerks employed as magistrates

AIM Podgorica, 26 November, 1998

(By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

If permitted to say so, from the aspect of the Law on information recently adopted in an emergency procedure, journalists, editors and owners of media in Serbia have equal status as prostitutes, drunkards, pick-pockets and similar disturbers of public order and peace. They are equal except for the height of the fines they are sentenced to pay: thanks to extraordinarily high fines, in the past month the state of Serbia increased its wealth by several million dinars, or by more than one million German marks. The little sense of humour that is left is expressed in Belgrade by the announcement of the first session of AVNOJ in Drvar - that is, in the restaurant called "Drvar", members of AVNOJ - Association of Owners anbd Journalists of Yugoslavia will meet, and not delegates of the National Liberation Movement who created new Yugoslavia in 1942 in the town in B&H called Drvar.

The fruit of the efforts of the state to introduce law and order in the sphere of public information have fallen on fertile Serbian ground. The decree on behavior of the media in conditions of (undeclared) state of immediate danger of war, which was enacted by minister Aleksandar Vucic - one of the representatives of the Serb Radical Party in the government of the "red-and-black" coalition of the Yugoslav Left, the Radicals and the Socialist Party of Serbia - in the shadow of the threat of NATO bombs, was quickly transformed into the law which obliges the courts in charge to carry out the whole procedure within 24 hours from the moment of filing a complaint against a media.

Patriotic Attack

The first complaint was filed by an organization which calls itself the Patriotic League of Belgrade (there is one of Serbia and Yugoslavia as well), in the past few years known mostly for the capability to appear from thin air at the "right moment". In the meantime it was impossible to find out much more about it - especilly not who its members are and what its platform is - except that, after the trial in which the owner and three editors of the weekly Evropljanin were sentenced to pay the total of 2.4 million dinars, it informed the public about its new address which accidentally happens to be in the building of the former central committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.

The exemplary speed of the trial, the resoluteness of the judges, the height of the fines, the efficiency in confiscation of property and seizure of truckloads of newspapers had (un)expected effects. The owner of daily Nasa Borba, Dusan Mijic, decided to temporarily interrupt its printing, and the owner of Nedeljni telegraf, Momcilo Djogovic, referred to the risk this Law incurs when he announced his decision to stop publishing the daily NT Plus. In these two cases it is possible that the risk of forcible shutting down coincided with difficulties the editorial teams had struggled with for months, especially Nasa Borba, publication of which had been interrupted on a few occasions before, because the employees had gone on strike.

One of the owners of Dnevni telegraf and weekly Evropljanin, Slavko Curuvija, unexpectedly became the target of the main brunt of the Law whose formal creator and actual executor, minister Vucic claims that "Serbia can be proud of its freedom of information", because "in our country, freedom of the press, thought and speech is fully observed, in certain cases even exceeding the limits of the law". Since the first sentence had been pronounced, Evropljanin cannot be seen at the newsstands, despite announcements, registration of DT Press enterprise in Montenegro, engagement of new printing works. Dnevni telegraf is struggling with the same destiny; it was first confiscated at its Belgrade printing works, and since it is printed in Podgorica, the police is stopping trains, buses and trucks coming from Montenegro, searching them for undesirable newspapers, as if they were smuggled heroine or weapons.

Theory of Treason

Leaders of two coalition partners in power, the Yugoslav Left and the Serb Radical Party, Mirjana Markovic and Vojislav Seselj, had stated their opinion on independent media both before and after passing of the Law on Information. Professor Markovic was the first, however, since a few years back, in her personal public diary published regularly in Duga magazine, later in Bazar, she was the one who introduced the division into "patriotic" and "treacherous" in the analysis of Serbian fourth estate. Everything was easier later on, and new concepts started appearing in the routine discourse of activists of the ruling, and not just ruling parties, such as "foreign mercenaries", "fifth columnists" and similar - when speaking not about their political opponents, true or invented enemies of Serbia, but about media which tore themselves away from comforts of state control.

That is the reason why the appearance of protectors of the truth in the form of the Patriotic League, thw organization called the League of Women of Yugoslavia - headed by the proven fighter against enemies ever since Ante Markovic and dissolution of Yugoslavia, Bratislava Morina - surprised nobody. Independent Union of Journalists of Serbia initiated a professional action for repealing the Law on Information which coincided with similar initiatives of individuals, organizations, parties, and newspapers themselves - which are for weeks already publishing the appeal for collecting 15 thousand signatures necessary for formal initiation of the assembly procedure for challenging the Law. Similar actions in the past years - even when over one hundred thousand signatures were collected - achieved absolutely no results. Nevertheless, the fact that at this moment in Serbia, with more or less intensity, numerous other protests are taking place: at the university where yet unseen drill and control customary for a state of emergency were introduced; among pensioners whose pensions are paid with several month delay; among health and education workers because they are not paid, shows how serious this attempt to repeal the Law is.

Media - A Highly Risky Business

In the midst of a schizophrenic situation - in which appeals are lodged by everybody who feels hurt or simply read their newspapers with moroseness, for a published statement the person who has given the statement is not held responsible, nor the journalist who has carried the statement, but editors and owners of the media in which the statement was published, the public prosecutor does not ban the particular incriminated article or issue, but the newspaper is shut down by a magistrate and the police - editting, managing or possessing a media in Serbia has become a highly risky business to complexity of which the regime is intentionally adding fear of unlimited persecution.

More based on experience and professional sixth sense than out of solidarity, majority of media continued to act as if the Law on Information had not existed, expecting that legal and judicial chaos it has caused would lead to giving up on its implementation if not its repealing. Zoran Djindjic, leader of the Democratic Party managed to ruin even that tiny gleam of hope in the power of common sense by accepting the offer to lodge appeals for almost anything that is published. Daily Politika and its manager Hadzi Dragan Antic were tried - and sentenced - pursuant his appeal. The fact that he accepted the Law by the very act of lodging an appeal pursuant this Law was stressed, with unconcealed pleasure, by the lawyer of Politika. Pehaps due to that, the action of the Democratic Party continued as a call to the citizens to collect the already prepared appeals at this party's seat in Belgrade and submit them to courts. It is not known what response this call has met with.

It became obvious from the so far held ten odd trials in Belgrade and inside Serbia that double standards are applied in pronouncing the height of the fines. Daily Danas which was at first symbolically printed as a supplement of Vijesti from Podgorica, can be bought in the streets of Belgrade again. In the meantime Belgrade daily Glas javnosti also clashed with the Law, which - along with Dnevni telegraf, Blic, Danas and some other journals - had managed to achieve a comparatively high and stable circulation and become quite influential on the limited market of Serbia. First it was tried and sentenced for a report on a property law-suit in Krgujevac, then Vojislav Seselj took things over in his hands. His, or rather the appeal of the Serb Radical Party against Glas javnosti introduced a new element in the trials. Glas javnosti was sentenced to pay a fine of 380 thousand dinars for having published the statement of Radmila Trajkovic, who was a member of Seselj's party and republican minister of family care until just recently. It seems that in the future, media will have to pay for internal party disputes and splits.

Perpetuum Mobile

In comparison with an invention of this kind of public responsibility on the basis of an arbitrary decision, even the Guiness's book of unbelievable records is flat. One of the latest examples of arbitrariness is rejection of the appeal lodged by the Democratic Party against Radio-Television Serbia for "publishing a false information" in live coverage of the football game between Yugoslavia and Ireland, in which it was stated that RTS tried to "conceal the real disposition of the citizens" by playing the national anthem from the studio, in order to cover up whistles of the spectators while it was played at the stadium. The appeal was rejected with the explanation that court registry did not work on Sundays - although a month ago, property of Dnevni telegraf and Evropljanin was confiscated on a Saturday night.

Resistance to the described examples of self-will of the authorities in Serbia is spreading, although slowly and perhaps not evidently enough. But, nothing can be done quickly and intensely in a country in which circulation of the press evidently goes up for a few days after pensions are paid and then it drops dramatically down again to the level which makes this profession literally equal to the Sisyphus' task of rolling stones up a hill. The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) which are also the target of this Law, warned the authorities that "democratic public informing in which the citizens cannot find out through the media what a public figure declared is unthinkable". Neither this, however, nor the stand that "the Law which does not prescribe fines for the authors of possible false or insulting information but only for media which faithfully carry information of public interest, is in fact a law of totalitarianism and non-freedom" or the warning that the Law does not protect privacy of public figures, but "enables private 'execution' of power" will not, at least in any foreseeable future, change the state of affairs in Serbia. Perhaps, as experienced pessimists warn, one should be more concerned by the habit of every "new" government or old-new coalition to repeal, amend, pass and implement its new ad-hoc laws. If this is a story about the law, jurisprodence and justice, in the first place.

Aleksandar Ciric

(AIM)